The present invention relates to a method of producing a molecular composite material comprising aromatic polythiazole as a rigid polymer and a matrix polymer, which molecular composite material is suitable as a structural material for aircraft, automobiles, spacecraft, etc.
Recently, to achieve the reduction of weight of aircraft, automobiles, etc., plastic materials called "engineering plastics" having excellent mechanical properties, heat resistance, etc. have been increasingly used. Apart from this, development has been actively carried out to provide composite materials such as FRPs consisting of plastic materials and high-strength, high-modulus fibers such as carbon fibers, and these composite materials are being used in many applications.
It is known that the strength of these composite materials largely depend not only on the strength of plastics and reinforcing fibers but also on the interfacial bonding strength of the fibers to the matrix resins. Also, the impregnating capability of matrix resins into the fiber-reinforced preforms affect the easiness of production of composite materials and the strength of the resulting products. Accordingly, even though high-strength, high-modulus fibers and resins are used as starting materials, composite materials having excellent strength are not necessarily obtained.
Under such circumstances, to overcome the above problems, proposals have been made to develop high-strength polymer blend composites (molecular composite materials) by finely dispersing rigid polymers such as aromatic polyamides, etc. in matrix resins to a molecular level.
Aromatic polymers suitable for molecular composite materials include those containing heterocyclic repeating units such as thiazole rings, imidazole rings, oxazole rings, oxazinone rings, etc. Among them, aromatic polythiazole having a thiazole ring is highly promising because of its excellent mechanical strength.
In the meantime, the homogeneous dispersion of a reinforcing polymer in a matrix polymer cannot be achieved if the reinforcing polymer is simply blended with the matrix polymer. This means that simple blending fails to provide a molecular composite material having excellent mechanical properties. Therefore, various attempts have been made so far to avoid this difficulty.
For instance, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-287167 discloses a method of producing a polymer composite comprising the steps of introducing a polymer solution mainly containing (A) a reinforcing polymer consisting of polythiazole having a substantially rod-shaped skeleton and (B) a fusible matrix polymer into a solidification bath, and forming it into a film, the above polymer solution showing an optical anisotropy and being solidified via an apparent, optically isotropic phase after immersion in the solidification bath.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 2-7976 discloses a polymer composition comprising a reinforcing polymer A consisting of polythiazole having a substantially rod-shaped skeleton, and a matrix polymer B consisting of a less-crystallizable aromatic copolyamide having a glass transition temperature of 200.degree. C. or higher and a flow-initiation temperature of 500.degree. C. or lower, a weight ratio of A/(A+B) being 0.15-0.70. When the aromatic copolyamide is kept at a temperature between its glass transition temperature and its flow-initiation temperature for an arbitrary period of time within 5 hours, the resulting crystals have apparent sizes of 2.5 nm or less.
However, in the methods of producing polymer composites as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-287167 and Japanese Patent Publication No. 2-7976, homogeneous dispersions of the reinforcing polymers in matrix polymers are not expected. This means that the resulting molecular composite materials do not show largely improved mechanical strength, etc. This appears to be due to the fact that the rigid reinforcing polymers and the matrix polymers do not show good compatibility with each other.
Thus, proposals have been made to provide a method of producing a molecular composite material of a rigid aromatic polymer, the method comprising the steps of homogeneously mixing a prepolymer of the rigid aromatic polymer and a matrix polymer or its prepolymer in an organic solvent, removing the organic solvent and then heating it so that the rigid aromatic polymer is formed from its prepolymer (Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 64-1760 and 64-1761).
Another proposal has also been made to provide the method of producing a molecular composite material, in which hydrogen atoms of thiol groups of an aromatic polythiazole prepolymer are substituted with alkyl groups to enhance a dispersibility of the aromatic polythiazole in a solvent (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-114062). By the above methods, molecular composite materials having relatively good mechanical strength, etc. can be produced.
However, these molecular composite materials fail to show sufficiently high dispersibility of the aromatic polythiazole prepolymer in the matrix polymer. In addition, the production of these molecular composite materials needs such a long period of time as one week for completion of the dispersing process. The mechanical strength of the molecular composite materials obtained by using these conventional methods is still insufficient. Therefore, further improvement is desired to overcome the deficiencies described above.